The boy’s tongue is thick
and inexact
and his lips will not arrange themselves
as they should, the sound is not
crisp, not
correct,
though the therapist knows
his thoughts are precise
as a knife.
She’s tired, her last
session that day. She understands
as she coaches him that
their disabilities
must be reversed.
He to speak
and her razored impatience
to widen, grow idle
in her mouth,
her cut words blunted, her competence
in disarray.
Dora is the award-winning author of four books of fiction and "Return Stroke," a memoir in essays. She lives in Delta, B.C.
Do they remember, that girl /
treading water in her cabin /
or the mother who held on /
for a long, last hour, praying /
until the tree itself gave way?
When I was in graduate school, there was a concern that electronic calculators would profoundly harm children’s ability to do mental calculations. Then, a few decades later, the fear was that violence in video games would lead to increased violence in real life. Now, there is a concern that smartphones are rewiring the brains of…
Believing that all human life is sacred – all are made in God’s image and Christ died for all – I embrace “a consistent life ethic,” from womb-to-tomb. I question the death penalty, abortion, war and euthanasia while supporting adequate incomes, healthy food, good housing, accessible health care and protecting the vulnerable. The challenge is how to talk respectfully and listen with reverence to friends, loved ones and relatives, not to mention congregants, on all sides of these issues.
I believe in the great discovery.I believe in the man who made the discovery.I believe in the fear of the manwho made the discovery . . . This is the beginning of the poem “Discovery” by the Nobel laureate, Polish poet Wisława Szymborska (pronounced ShimBORska). It was first published in a 1972 collection. Poland was…
They are tiny. Whiplash spines with two dark eyeballs and a sagging orange egg sac belly. They torpedo along the bottom of the pale blue trough, crowd each other. I can’t see the fins that beat invisibly, thin as a breath, as one by one, each in its own mysterious time, the tiny fish struggle…
It has been a long timesince Grandpa Abu Ibrahim passed away.His fading image haunts me from time to time: A native of the holy land, dark-skinned, broad-lined forehead, hair invaded by age, youth’s black edges neatly combed backwards, not very thick, skin like a desert covered by zig-zag lines of bare sand, liquid eyes as green as virgin olives not ripe for…
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